


a lot can happen in a year (the seven days of the week edition)

by antistar_e (kaikamahine)



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-04
Updated: 2011-11-04
Packaged: 2017-10-31 01:51:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/338563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaikamahine/pseuds/antistar_e
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The date is May 23, 2003. It's a Tuesday, and Eduardo has somewhere important to be. Supposedly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a lot can happen in a year (the seven days of the week edition)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for robin_2370_hood, who prompted me with, "Mark/Eduardo, Mark distracting Eduardo from important things."
> 
> You can read this here or [@ LJ](http://antistar-e.livejournal.com/570145.html?format=light).

-

 

 

**Tuesday, May 23, 2003**

Mark answers the door in a towel. Because this is Mark and if anyone wanted him to _not_ answer the door, no matter his state of undress, then they should have gotten their giggling asses off the fucking couch and done it themselves. Yeah, here's to looking at you, Dustin and Billy. God, Mark is already regretting the decision to room with them in the fall.

"Hi," says the guy in the hallway, kind of blankly. His eyes drop down the line of Mark's chest to his legs and promptly rebounds, like a Whack-a-Mole. "Um, hi," he goes again, and holds up a tome of a textbook. "I'm looking for Chris? Normally I would just wait to see him in class, but he needs it and I need to go meet with my group members, like, five minutes ago, so --"

"Whatever, man, sure," goes Mark, holding the door open and stepping back to let the guy in. He doesn't actually know where Chris is, but he says in what he hopes is a close enough guess, "Chris ran down to the C-store."

"Oh," says the guy, shifting his weight uncomfortably. "Should I just --"

Okay, this has officially reached Mark's tolerance threshold.

"There's a draft, and I'm naked and wet," Mark volunteers, just to see the guy swallow his overly polite tongue. "So you should probably come in if you're going to wait for him anyway. There's Doritos there on the table, help yourself, and I ... don't actually know what that is, but it hasn't killed those two over there yet, so you're probably safe. Unless you're worried about permanent brain damage, in which case just stick to the Doritos."

"I really do have to meet my group members, soon, but thanks for offering potential brain damage." This is delivered mostly in the general direction of Mark's belly button. Considering Chris's friend has got at least three layers on, even though it's the end of May and pretty much all the snow has melted, Mark gets the impression that shirtlessness discomforts him.

"Yeah, sure," he goes. "Any time."

Thirty minutes later, when Chris actually does get back from wherever he was, Eduardo's still there, bag of Doritos in his lap and Mark in sweats next to him on the couch.

 

**Wednesday, May 23, 2004**

"We're not distracting you from anything, are we, Wardo?" Dustin asks suddenly, and Mark looks up, startled to find Eduardo there, leaning against the open door and watching them sort boxes with illegible scrawls of Sharpie arching across their sides. His eyes have gone soft, strangely downturned at the corners, moving from box to box like he's trying to unpack them and put everything in them back where they were, like he wants to trap it in a snow globe.

The hallway of Kirkland is noisy, cluttered with people navigating the staircases like ants, carrying bundles twice as big as they are. Behind Eduardo, their RA is setting up a Salvation Army donation bin on the landing, for the little bits and pieces of accumulated dorm life that's not important enough to go home or go into storage, and not frivolous enough to just throw out.

Mark leaves his comforter half-folded on the bare mattress and goes over to him.

"No, nothing much," Eduardo answers, a beat too late, and smiles when Mark tilts his head quizzically. "Unlike you guys, I still have another final this week that I need to study for. You know, nothing big, just trying not to flunk out of school so my life can actually go somewhere."

"Meh," is Mark's opinion, a flippant wave of his hand. He doesn't go back to what he was doing -- the expression on Eduardo's face stops him.

"I just wanted to come by, in case I miss you when you leave tomorrow. Wish you, I don't know, luck or something," he shrugs twice in a row, trying for casual and even Mark can pick up on the fact that it's missing by a mile.

So it's Mark who moves first, although he isn't sure if that was a cue: he loops his arms around Eduardo's neck and pulls him in. The bones under his hands shift, like a bird startled and caught before it could achieve flight, and then Eduardo hugs him back, hard. "Bye, Wardo," he goes.

"Yeah," says Eduardo softly, and then, "Just. I hope everything works out for you guys in California. Don't get into too much trouble."

His voice is directed to everyone at large -- Dustin, lost under a mess of looseleaf paper and three-ring binders and looking pathetically out of his depth, and the interns, stoically working their way through the mess, headphones clamped down over their ears -- but his eyes are on Mark. Mark hasn't had the urge to kiss him since that thing with the bar and the girls and the room in Eliot, so it's startling, how strong the compulsion is right now.

"Yeah," he says.

 

**Thursday, May 23, 2005**

Mark has seven months to forget the spectacle Eduardo made out of the shares dilution thing -- the employees on the floor have mostly forgotten it all already, because while, yes, there was a bitchy tantrum and some shouting and everything was awkward for a bit, there's usually always _somebody_ (read: Mark) shouting about something, and besides, Sean's unceremonious departure from the company was a bit more gossip-worthy -- before he gets served with the lawsuit.

The notice is slid across the table towards him. He sends it a look of deepest loathing.

"Tell him we're busy," he tells the lawyers -- his own set, now, not the pair Peter Thiel lent them when they signed the angel investment, whose names Mark never bothered to learn, although he overheard someone calling them Bert and Ernie and it stuck in his head. He supposes he liked them, because you have to admire their bravery. They were the only ones willing to fuck Eduardo over and smile at him dead-on while doing it.

But these ones are shiny, polished, and new, and have that bored look of disdain that Mark trusts in a lawyer.

The one on the left is Sy, who Mark hired purely for his _look at all these fucks I don't give_ attitude and the other one is (this isn't funny, he's perfectly serious) named Atticus. 

Atticus won't be around to force Mark in real people clothes and frog-march him to the depositions, because three weeks from now, he'll win the state lottery. He will quit his job, buy an orchid greenhouse and a chicken coop, and live in peace on the Big Island, as far away from any major cities and people like Mark as he can get.

"I'm serious," Mark continues. "Tell him that I absolutely cannot clear my schedule for him in the foreseeable future. I could have an appointment to rearrange my sock drawer or pick my nose and it would still take precedence over this _bullshit."_ He makes a sharp gesture at the papers.

Sy and Atticus exchange looks.

"Mr. Zuckerberg ..." starts Atticus, in a _I seriously wish I could win the lottery and retire to Hawaii and not deal with this kind of shit_ tone of voice.

Mark sighs, stepping up to the board table. He only takes the time to glance at the header before he shakes his head.

"Send this back," he says, and tosses the notice back down on the table. "It says Eduardo Saverin, CFO of Facebook, is trying to sue us on blah-blah-blah charges, whatever, I don't care," he waves a dismissive hand. "Check the masthead, gentlemen. Eduardo Saverin is not the CFO of Facebook. The CFO of Facebook is Marge Nyobok. I know because I hired her. We cannot be sued by someone who doesn't exist."

The lawyers exchange another look, longer this time.

Later, when he comes back to his desk after heating up a can of Chunky's for dinner in the break room, he finds the "on-hold" light on his phone flashing impatiently.

"You're going to want to take that, Mr. Zuckerberg," says Hoburn helpfully from behind the safety of his own desk. "Line 2."

Mark sets the can down, licking soup off the inside of his thumb and lifting the phone off its hook, placing it into the cradle of his shoulder.

"That is fucking petty, Mark, and you know it," Eduardo hisses into his ear, fierce and vicious, without any sort of preamble or greeting.

Leaning back into his chair, Mark goes fishing in his desk drawer for a spoon, wiping it off on the hem of his shirt when he finds it. "I don't know, Wardo," he says mildly. "It seems to me most lawsuits are predicated on really minor technicalities, so you should probably edit that a little more carefully and try again. Honestly, it's almost like you don't care."

The noise Eduardo makes at that is almost animalistic, it's so furious. "I have," he grits out. "A thousand things I would rather be doing with my time than deal with your passive-aggressive bullshit."

"Excellent," retorts Mark. "Looks like we've found something to agree on."

He hangs up.

 

**Friday, May 23, 2006**

"I need you not to judge me," is what Mark prefaces everything else with, as his heart makes a herculean effort to pound out of his chest. "Just ... for five minutes, please."

His voice cracks on the last word, and he squeezes his eyes shut, shading them with one hand like there's anyone around to see him. His office is dark, nonjudgmental, and there's no one on this floor. He's checked. It's a Friday -- everyone else has a dozen other things they'd rather be doing.

"I ... don't even think we're supposed to talk, Mark," Eduardo's voice replies, but it comes out flat, with no punch behind it. He was so much quicker on the uptake than Mark was when it came to interpreting tone, and Mark genuinely has no idea what his voice sounds like right now, but it's not antagonism, whatever it is. 

Let's ask the audience, shall we. What is the opposite of a friend and also the opposite of an enemy?

Something in need of pity.

"Just," Mark blurts into the quiet. "I -- how's your sister? And your brothers? Didn't the youngest just start college, um, I think that's right -- I never caught where, you should tell me."

"Mark?" He knows that voice. That's Eduardo going into full-on crisis-managing mode -- Mark used to provoke him into it for things a lot more trivial than this, simply because Eduardo doesn't ask stupid questions when he's in crisis-managing mode, he just _does,_ and that's the version of Eduardo Mark used to like best. There's a scuffle on the other end, like Eduardo just set down something heavy, shoving it across his desk or table or something.

"Edu -- War --" No, neither of those is right: Mark doesn't know how he's supposed to refer to Eduardo anymore in a way that won't piss him off. "Can you just, tell me, or talk to me, or something," oh god, has he become this person? Is this one of those impulsive decisions that's going to come back and bite him in the ass, like that bit with the Harvard girls and the farm animals? "My sister, she ..." No, it turns out, he doesn't have the words. "Objectively, I know that I'm not entitled to her grief, not at all, because it's not my tragedy, but I -- she's my _family_ and we were all looking forward to ..." his voice drops, because it's the only way to keep it steady. "She was so excited about having that baby, and now. Am I --"

"You're allowed to grieve over that," says Eduardo immediately. "Mark, you're allowed to be heartbroken."

Mark's breath shudders out of him in a way he'll be embarrassed about later, but not right now. "Sorry," he goes, almost absently, even as he feels the tight, constricting bind around his ribs ease a little bit, because permission from Eduardo means more than it would have from anyone else, bizarrely. Like Eduardo has the monopoly on feeling shitty and he's the only person Mark can think to ask for rent space. "Did I ... were you busy?"

"No," Eduardo says, in the kneejerk way of someone telling a white lie. "No, Mark. I have time."

 

**Saturday, May 23, 2007**

Eduardo's girlfriend is someone named Alice.

Mark has never seen her, met her, or bothered looking at her Facebook page (although he meant to, once or twice, and then got distracted by something more important than idle Facebook stalking, which was a lot of things,) but he does know that they've been dating long enough that they've kind of become a packaged set, the way couples do after a prolonged period of time. Whenever the holidays come around, he'll overhear comments between his secretaries and staff like, "did you remember to send a card to Alice and Eduardo," and that's been a couple consecutive holiday seasons in a row.

Around ... he wants to say January, sometime, he doesn't really remember, Hoburn pushes his rolling office chair over to Mark's desk and asks if he's going to RSVP to the wedding.

Hoburn is shorter even than Mark; squat, rotund, and sporting a salt-and-pepper mustache that bristles around his mouth like something half-sentient. Although his official position within Facebook is somewhere in the HR hierarchy, he's basically in charge of scheduling Mark's life, because he has a voice that sounds like Ian McKellen and Morgan Freeman sat down and had a baritone baby. Mark likes to cancel important appointments for shits and giggles, just because he can, and it's impossible to get mad when Ian McKellen and Morgan Freeman's vocal offspring is extending its apologies for the inconvenience -- Hoburn is just so soothing about it.

"Uh," goes Mark, struck with the whole concept of _wedding_ and biting back the initial creeping sensation of _oh god my friends are growing up left, right, and center, help, how do I go back and stop this adult thing from happening_ and winds up saying, "Sure."

Since he said it kind of like he was agreeing to flick the lights off before he went home for the night, Hoburn looks at him over the tops of his frames.

"Hmm," is his only comment, and he rolls away very slowly.

Mark turns around, setting his fingers over his keyboard, right before it hits him that Eduardo is getting _married._ Like, _married_ married, not the jokingly married he was to Dustin before Dustin clued in that Eduardo didn't realize his Relationship Status had been changed and reluctantly switched it back to Single. He draws his hands into his lap for a beat before reaching for his phone and firing off a text to Chris.

_What do you know about Eduardo's girlfriend._

_That you are not allowed to talk to her under any circumstances. mark if you scare her off I will cry. And quit. And tell National Enquirer that you're an avid collector of nude garden gnomes._

Mark scowls, flexes his thumbs, and realizes he is not going to text-bomb this. He hits Call.

"I'm not out to vindictively sabotage their relationship, Chris, what are you, whatever, when did you get brain damage? Why is that your first assumption? I just wanted to -- listen, what is she _like?"_

Chris heaves a world-weary sigh. That sound follows Mark into his nightmares, it really does. "She was at Harvard with us, Mark, come on. She helped us interview interns and later, was one of the first people to buy Facebook stock, remember?"

"No," says Mark honestly, racking his brain.

The wedding is on the third Saturday in May -- Mark forgets about it until almost the week before, and upon hitting a dead end with wedding gifts, he sends an e-mail to Eduardo's professional address asking him what he could possibly get for them that Eduardo couldn't buy himself ( _did you quote Overboard at me?_ he gets back. He replies, _Sadly, Eduardo, I cannot give you children,_ and then in a bid to maintain their masculinity, they pretend not to understand each other's references.)

It turns out to be a very simple affair; it's a modern, straight-forward civil ceremony. There's a number of sharply-dressed guests that Mark somewhat recognizes but mostly doesn't, a few professional photographers, and a judge who comes in half-past noon, licking mustard from his fingers and wiping the rest on his vestments.

It only gets suddenly, abruptly, and horribly weird when the bride makes her walk down the aisle, radiant and smiling a smile that can probably be seen from space, and Mark realizes that he knows _exactly_ who she is.

Five minutes later, he is out in the hallway, folded down into the space between a potted plant and a trash can because he is, in fact, the millionaire CEO of a highly successful Silicon Valley company and he got a 1600 on the SATs and always demonstrates the nobility of these accomplishments at the best possible times.

He thumbs at his phone, lifting it to his ear.

"I need advice on how to behave at a wedding when you've slept with both the bride and the groom and it's the only thing you can think of when you look at them," is what he says when the call connects.

"... I -- uh ... ju -- _Mark?"_ goes Marilyn Delpy.

"Yes, hi, hello, I should have said that, sorry to bother you, of course you're at work, I just need --"

"Don't worry, I heard you the first time," she interrupts. " _Wow._ Um, okay, _where_ are you?"

"Specifically? The hallway, although I'm assuming you meant a more general, global location, in which case, I'm at Eduardo Saverin and Alice --"

"Alice Simmons's wedding," she finishes, a whole new wealth of understanding suddenly dawning through her tone. "Okay, well, first, it's their _wedding,_ so don't even think about bringing up the fact you have seen them without clothing in your casual, congratulatory conversation. And don't tell anybody else."

"Right, because my first impulse was to grab the nearest microphone and announce it. Contrary to popular opinion, I am capable of using tact in order to maintain a friendship. I've managed with you, right?"

"Yes, you have," she admits. "Okay. Smile, nod, and pretend that -- how far did you get with them anyway?"

The courthouse floor is granite, flecked with greys and silvers and blacks, dinged and nicked in places from taking years of abuse. Mark traces a connect-the-dots pattern between specks with his fingertip and then wipes the grit off on his slacks. "The giving and receiving of oral sex, in both cases," he replies, the honesty coming on automatic. And then, "wait, were you asking me that in the spirit of giving advice, or ..."

"No, that was me satisfying my own prurient interest in the sex lives of my friends," she says gleefully. "Now, get back in there and forget that this is the most awkward third wheel experience of your life, because today is not about you."

"I don't understand that statement," Mark deadpans in response, but he thumbs the end call button and straightens his suit jacket. 

When he slips back into the courtroom, it's just in time for the "by the power invested in me by the state of Vermont, I now pronounce you husband and wife" bit, and he sits back down between Dustin and Billy, watching Eduardo and Alice both lean in for their kiss at the same time, their eagerness making them bump noses and giggle nervously, and then Mark is put right back on his feet with everyone else, cheering and clapping as the newlyweds turn and lift their joined hands. Behind them, the judge checks his watch.

Eduardo finds him at the reception later, handing him a flute of champagne in greeting and then saying, "You disappeared."

"I beg your pardon?" Mark responds, blankly. He'd been expecting a comment on how he'd been a cheapskate and hadn't gotten them a gift, not this.

"You missed my wedding, man," Eduardo spreads his hands out, not angry, just curious and maybe a little put out -- Mark still isn't the best at reading expressions, but Eduardo couldn't put up a good poker face to save his life. He's wearing the smoothest, nicest-looking suit Mark has ever seen on him; it's the soft grey color of doves or an overcast sky. He looks, in short, like a man on his wedding day; handsome, overwhelmed, and happy. "I saw you sneaking out and then back in."

"Important phone call," Mark excuses himself absently, and tilts a frown up, his mind stuck on that one point. "Why were you noticing anyway? _Eduardo,"_ he drags out, disbelieving and reprimanding in turns. "You were up there exchanging, like, promises or whatever with Alice on vaguely important things like till death do you part! Objectively, I understand that I have all the social niceties of a gnat, but even _I_ know that you probably shouldn't be looking at anyone _other than your wife_ on your wedding day -- _Eduardo!"_

All this is said very fast, and with increasing volume, so that when Mark finishes, Eduardo is almost bent double, wheezing with laughter. Mark gestures with his hands, too agitated to care that the champagne sloshes a little bit.

Drawn by the noise, Alice appears on Mark's other side. She's changed out of the white dress she wore for the ceremony into a high-collared gown that Mark wants to call a sari but doesn't really know enough to say. It's a deep, vibrant red, patterned with broad lines of blue so deep they look like Spanish tile, and makes him think along the lines of drowning.

There's a gold nose ring through her right nostril and loose coils of mendhi snake their way along the backs of her hands and up her arms, still a fresh burnt red color from having been hastily applied. She wraps them around Mark's neck in an enthusiastic hello. He hugs her back, careful of the wine, trying valiantly not to think and definitely not to blurt out anything along the lines of, _hey, remember that night I said I wanted to expand to Yale and Columbia and we all wound up naked and, like, doing stuff in Eduardo's room? Yeah, good times -- how did you go from that to marrying him? And how did I not notice?_

Alice lets him go, grinning up at him, murmuring _thank you for coming, Mark,_ and then turning to her new husband, who is making these ridiculous fishy gulping sounds as he tries to laugh and breathe at the same time.

"It wasn't that funny," Mark tells him acidly.

Eduardo looks up; his face is bright crimson and crinkled up, cracked open like a walnut. Alice smiles back at him, in that helpless, kneejerk way people do when they don't know the joke, but it doesn't matter because it's the only thing you can do when people are laughing as brightly and openly as that. She takes his hands between her own and they stand there, giggling.

It's the most beautiful thing about them, Mark thinks -- the way they smile at each other, so that it dominates their whole face, so there's nowhere else to look. Eduardo and Alice could lose everything; they could both be badly burned or disfigured or completely destitute or suddenly get the impulse to dress like clowns and they would still be absolutely beautiful people, just by the way they smile.

Feeling warm, and a little bubbly from proximity, Mark stands off to the side and checks his phone.

 

**Sunday, May 23, 2008**

Vermont, contrary to popular opinion, is a perfectly acceptable place to be, if you don't mind the fact that blood is thicker than water and maple syrup is thicker than blood, therefore pancakes and waffles are pretty much the main staple of existence and more important than family.

All at once, Mark realizes that he has an unspecified number of vacation days and begins using them, obstinately telling Hoburn that he's taken up skiing.

"Hmmm," is the only thing Hoburn says in return, managing to pack an obscene amount of disbelief into one syllable. His eyebrows go up when Mark then manages to clothesline himself on the metal bar of Pacman decorations that Dustin hung up around the bullpen, and he rolls his office chair over in order to offer him a hand up. "Good luck with the ski trip, Mr. Zuckerberg," he says, wry. "I'll arrange the flights."

"Thanks, Hoburn," wheezes Mark.

The trip he makes towards the end of May that year happens to coincide with the Saverins' first wedding anniversary. Alice Saverin picks him up from the airport with that smile Mark never gets tired of seeing. She's in her third year of med school and already has an offer to go work for the FBI when she graduates. In conversation with Dustin and Chris, Mark's taken to calling her Scully . He gets his baggage from the carousel, goes digging around in it, and offers her a bottle of Napa Valley's best, which makes her laugh and say, "you got this from the Cheese House right off of El Camino, didn't you?"

"Yes," Mark replies, startled. "How did you --"

"You left the price tag on," Alice turns the bottle to show him, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

Mark isn't sure what, exactly, his position is in the Saverins' household -- phone calls were one thing, an invitation to the wedding was a pure formality for the sakes of their respective PR departments, but weekends in Vermont at the closest neighborhood bar with a foosball table and nights in the guest room definitely makes a friendship, right? Is it even _possible_ to put friendship into parameters, because Mark would really like to see someone try.

It's awkward, sometimes, being that person who's seen both husband and wife naked, but it's not the most important facet of their friendship and they seem comfortable with him. 

He's _certain_ he's reading _that_ one correctly.

It's not really a matter of apologizing, if that's what you're wondering. It feels more like that very first time, like Mark's opened his door and found this stranger on his doorstep again. It's just easier to become friends, because that comes more naturally than the bitterness.

When Mark looks at Eduardo now, the first memory that comes to mind isn't the way he looked in the hallway of the Webster St. house, soaking wet and furious, or him sitting across from him in the deposition room, ready to drag him across the coals of judge and jury, but rather -- rather he remembers the floor of Eduardo's dorm, the way Eduardo's face had felt between his palms, the slow, drowning draw of his mouth, as Christy and Alice slept in the bed.

He doesn't know how they've compartmentalized the experience, you're going to have to ask them, but Mark mostly remembers being really, _really_ angry at Erica Albright for humiliating him in that bar (well, for the second time,) so it probably lands in rebound territory. He remembers Christy, tucking herself up against Eduardo's headboard and sleepily watching Mark ease Alice's panties off of her hips, and he remembers the way Eduardo kept stroking his ribs with the flat of his hand, the way you'd do to a companionable pet. There'd been a lot of giggling, but in his memory, it's a comfortable sound -- not like anyone was making fun of anyone else, even though they had to look _really_ silly, the four of them almost falling down from exhaustion and naked, but more like they couldn't help themselves.

"Mark," goes Eduardo, the Sunday into his visit. "Quit trying to distract me."

"I'm not," Mark answers, kneejerk.

"You kind of are."

Mark sits up. Next to him on the couch, Eduardo fixes him with a stern look, his laptop open across his thighs. He thinks it's kind of ironic, that Eduardo works for a company that lets him do his job from anywhere that has high-speed Internet access and a computer, when Eduardo couldn't even understand simple keyboard shortcuts when Mark first met him. But Alice really loved the mountains, so they decided on Vermont. Behind Eduardo's head, Mark can see distant, snow-capped peaks through the bay window.

He slides off the couch, knees cracking against the hardwood floors. "Distracting you from what," he goes, and curls his fingers around Eduardo's kneecap. "I highly doubt you're doing anything important."

Eduardo gives him a wide-eyed look, disbelieving. "Well, my wedding vows, for one," he retorts, and Mark ignores the flare of pride in his chest at the implication that he, Mark Zuckerberg, who forgets to put on deodorant in the morning seven times out of ten and is five-foot-six only if he stretches his neck, is any threat whatsoever to the state of Eduardo's marriage.

"If that's the case," he murmurs, canting his voice low. "You should tell your wife that she should come join us, instead of hiding behind the door to the kitchen to see what we'll do."

"Mark!" comes Alice's protest, and Eduardo startles under Mark's hands.

His head cranes around, eyes landing on Alice as she steps out around the door to the bathroom.

She comes to stand by the arm of the sofa, her black hair loose around her shoulders and her eyes drifting first from Mark, kneeling, to Eduardo, whose knees have spread open unconsciously. Eduardo's hand goes up of its own accord, fingers catching around her wrist. They look at each other for a long, quiet beat, communicating something Mark can't translate.

"If you want," he offers, unable to stand the silence. "We can just call this an anniversary present and you can forget the wine."

"Shut up, Mark," says Alice.

Eduardo's fingers tighten around her wrist and then let go, which seems to be all it takes, because suddenly, she rounds the sofa and straddles Mark's thighs without ceremony, bracing her hands on his shoulders. It's not entirely comfortable and Mark is going to have a bad case of pins-and-needles in his feet later, but this is so much better than it was before, when he had to worry about the Eliot RA coming by to complain about the noise or about how gross the floor of the bar bathroom was when he pinned Alice against the stall partition and licked up the inside of her thighs.

"You rich boys and your complexes," she murmurs, one hand sliding up to catch the line of his jaw, her thumb brushing over Mark's lips, a touch that jolts straight down the back of his spine, like he'd stuck a finger in a light socket. "The whole world is yours thanks to money and sheer dumb luck, and the only thing you can think to ask for is more."

"It's the only you can do," Mark replies, perfectly reasonably. "You can't just stop. So yeah, you demand more."

"Ask," she corrects him. Her mouth is obscenely close to his and he's losing the thread of what they're talking about. "Ask politely."

"Can I kiss you?"

"Please do," says Eduardo, in an airless gulp of noise. He leans forward, and when Alice ducks her smile to press it against Mark's own, his fingers are already feathering in Mark's hair.

 

**Monday, May 23, 2009**

Eduardo sleeps on his stomach with his feet poking out from underneath the comforter, even in the dead of winter, so to wake him up, Mark has taken to pressing an ice cube to the bottoms of his feet. It never fails to be funny, the way Eduardo will yelp and jolt upright and look wildly from Mark, melting ice cube in his hand, to Alice, giggling with a sheet puddled around her waist.

Eventually, Eduardo gives up trying to bitch about the lost sleep.

"I am never going to get anything done. All those times I dragged you out to see sunlight when we were younger and you bitched like you were Mozart and I had separated you from your symphonies -- this is just payback, isn't it?" he says with the put-upon voice of the very, very long-suffering. "No good deed goes unpunished and all that?"

Mark doesn't dignify this with a reply, but when Eduardo looks back, like he always does, the corners of Mark's eyes are creased with the effort of withholding a smile.

 

-  
fin


End file.
